Astonishing the Gods is a novel by Booker Award Winning author Ben Okri. His dream-like prose transports the reader on a journey through an enchanted island, where philosophy is explored in the narrator's encounters and experiences in a quest to discover the secrets of visibility. The island is home to invisible beings who have built a utopian society based on a single law, 'Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully for the first time.'

I'm not going to pretend I understood this book! The descriptions read like a Biblical rendering of heaven: jewelled roads, hosts of angels, and emerald horned unicorns all present in a city so richly imagined that the experience of reading becomes vaguely surreal, as the reader is aware that the imagery merely scratches the surface of the enormity of the vision conveyed.

It sounds daunting, but this really is one of the most amazing books I've ever read. If you're too old for fairy tales, I think this is as close as you get to reliving the experience of a bedtime story.

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